So, the last post was all about where we’re at and what we’ve been working on so far. As we’re about to reach a huge milestone, actually making our first batch of chocolate, I thought it would be a good idea to share our plan for the future with you. Don’t worry, it won’t be as long as yesterday’s post :).

The Chocolate

As I mentioned in the previous post, we’re just waiting on our shipment of beans in order to make our first batch of chocolate. We’ve ordered enough beans to make several test batches. Now, these first beans are not the most interesting or complex beans in the world. Our plan is to use them until we feel we have a good understanding of the basics. Undoubtedly, we’ll make mistakes as we learn, and there’s no sense in wasting great beans.

Once we feel confident in the basics, the next step is to decide which bean we’re going to use for our first bar. To do this, we’re planning to get small shipments of several varieties of beans. We’ll make a few batches from each and then compare all the different chocolates and decide which one we want to focus on.

Then, the real fun begins!

Once we’ve decided on the bean, we’ll get a lot of it and start playing with it. We’ll make test batch after test batch adjusting roasting times, tweaking formulations, and generally just experimenting with each step. With each adjustment, we’ll make tasting notes and compare each batch to previous ones.

Through this painstaking process, we’ll have to eat a lot of chocolate. It’ll be tough, but we’ll soldier on gradually refining the process until we perfect our first bar.

After that, on to bar #2 🙂

The Business

We’ve got a lot of plans for where we’d like to go on the business side of things, too. In addition to selling directly through this site, we’ve been identifying potential retail outlets and have made contact with a few. We’ll continue to work on that and continue making contacts within the industry to get our name, and eventually our chocolate, out there.